by Vernon Lee
4
From that moment I began to assume a certain interest in the eyes of Mrs.Oke; or rather, I began to perceive that I had a means of securing herattention. Perhaps it was wrong of me to do so; and I have often reproachedmyself very seriously later on. But after all, how was I to guess that Iwas making mischief merely by chiming in, for the sake of the portrait Ihad undertaken, and of a very harmless psychological mania, with what wasmerely the fad, the little romantic affectation or eccentricity, of ascatter-brained and eccentric young woman? How in the world should I havedreamed that I was handling explosive substances? A man is surely notresponsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he dealswith as with all the rest of the world, are quite different from all otherhuman creatures.
So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blamemyself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for aportrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, _bizarre_personality. I could not possibly do my subject justice so long as I waskept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character of thewoman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any moreinnocent way of doing so could be found than talking to a woman, andletting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of ancestorsof hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they hadmurdered?--particularly as I studiously respected the prejudices of myhost, and refrained from mentioning the matter, and tried to restrain Mrs.Oke from doing so, in the presence of William Oke himself.
I had certainly guessed correctly. To resemble the Alice Oke of the year1626 was the caprice, the mania, the pose, the whatever you may call it, ofthe Alice Oke of 1880; and to perceive this resemblance was the sure way ofgaining her good graces. It was the most extraordinary craze, of all theextraordinary crazes of childless and idle women, that I had ever met; butit was more than that, it was admirably characteristic. It finished off thestrange figure of Mrs. Oke, as I saw it in my imagination--this _bizarre_creature of enigmatic, far-fetched exquisiteness--that she should have nointerest in the present, but only an eccentric passion in the past. Itseemed to give the meaning to the absent look in her eyes, to herirrelevant and far-off smile. It was like the words to a weird piece ofgipsy music, this that she, who was so different, so distant from all womenof her own time, should try and identify herself with a woman of thepast--that she should have a kind of flirtation--But of this anon.
I told Mrs. Oke that I had learnt from her husband the outline of thetragedy, or mystery, whichever it was, of Alice Oke, daughter of VirgilPomfret, and the poet Christopher Lovelock. That look of vague contempt, ofa desire to shock, which I had noticed before, came into her beautiful,pale, diaphanous face.
"I suppose my husband was very shocked at the whole matter," shesaid--"told it you with as little detail as possible, and assured youvery solemnly that he hoped the whole story might be a mere dreadfulcalumny? Poor Willie! I remember already when we were children, and Iused to come with my mother to spend Christmas at Okehurst, and my cousinwas down here for his holidays, how I used to horrify him by insistingupon dressing up in shawls and waterproofs, and playing the story of thewicked Mrs. Oke; and he always piously refused to do the part of Nicholas,when I wanted to have the scene on Cotes Common. I didn't know then that Iwas like the original Alice Oke; I found it out only after our marriage.You really think that I am?"
She certainly was, particularly at that moment, as she stood in a whiteVandyck dress, with the green of the park-land rising up behind her, andthe low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, herexquisitely bowed head, with a pale-yellow halo. But I confess I thoughtthe original Alice Oke, siren and murderess though she might be, veryuninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite creature whom I hadrashly promised myself to send down to posterity in all her unlikelywayward exquisiteness.
One morning while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of Conservativemanifestoes and rural decisions--he was justice of the peace in a mostliteral sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, defending the weak andadmonishing the ill-conducted--one morning while I was making one of mymany pencil-sketches (alas, they are all that remain to me now!) of myfuture sitter, Mrs. Oke gave me her version of the story of Alice Oke andChristopher Lovelock.
"Do you suppose there was anything between them?" I asked--"that she wasever in love with him? How do you explain the part which tradition ascribesto her in the supposed murder? One has heard of women and their lovers whohave killed the husband; but a woman who combines with her husband to killher lover, or at least the man who is in love with her--that is surely verysingular." I was absorbed in my drawing, and really thinking very little ofwhat I was saying.
"I don't know," she answered pensively, with that distant look in her eyes."Alice Oke was very proud, I am sure. She may have loved the poet verymuch, and yet been indignant with him, hated having to love him. She mayhave felt that she had a right to rid herself of him, and to call upon herhusband to help her to do so."
"Good heavens! what a fearful idea!" I exclaimed, half laughing. "Don't youthink, after all, that Mr. Oke may be right in saying that it is easier andmore comfortable to take the whole story as a pure invention?"
"I cannot take it as an invention," answered Mrs. Oke contemptuously,"because I happen to know that it is true."
"Indeed!" I answered, working away at my sketch, and enjoying putting thisstrange creature, as I said to myself, through her paces; "how is that?"
"How does one know that anything is true in this world?" she repliedevasively; "because one does, because one feels it to be true, I suppose."
And, with that far-off look in her light eyes, she relapsed into silence.
"Have you ever read any of Lovelock's poetry?" she asked me suddenly thenext day.
"Lovelock?" I answered, for I had forgotten the name. "Lovelock,who"--But I stopped, remembering the prejudices of my host, who wasseated next to me at table.
"Lovelock who was killed by Mr. Oke's and my ancestors."
And she looked full at her husband, as if in perverse enjoyment of theevident annoyance which it caused him.
"Alice," he entreated in a low voice, his whole face crimson, "for mercy'ssake, don't talk about such things before the servants."
Mrs. Oke burst into a high, light, rather hysterical laugh, the laugh of anaughty child.
"The servants! Gracious heavens! do you suppose they haven't heard thestory? Why, it's as well known as Okehurst itself in the neighbourhood.Don't they believe that Lovelock has been seen about the house? Haven'tthey all heard his footsteps in the big corridor? Haven't they, my dearWillie, noticed a thousand times that you never will stay a minute alone inthe yellow drawing-room--that you run out of it, like a child, if I happento leave you there for a minute?"
True! How was it I had not noticed that? or rather, that I only nowremembered having noticed it? The yellow drawing-room was one of the mostcharming rooms in the house: a large, bright room, hung with yellow damaskand panelled with carvings, that opened straight out on to the lawn, farsuperior to the room in which we habitually sat, which was comparativelygloomy. This time Mr. Oke struck me as really too childish. I felt anintense desire to badger him.
"The yellow drawing-room!" I exclaimed. "Does this interesting literarycharacter haunt the yellow drawing-room? Do tell me about it. What happenedthere?"
Mr. Oke made a painful effort to laugh.
"Nothing ever happened there, so far as I know," he said, and rose from thetable.
"Really?" I asked incredulously.
"Nothing did happen there," answered Mrs. Oke slowly, playing mechanicallywith a fork, and picking out the pattern of the tablecloth. "That is justthe extraordinary circumstance, that, so far as any one knows, nothing everdid happen there; and yet that room has an evil reputation. No member ofour family, they say, can bear to sit there alone for more than a minute.You see, William evidently cannot."
"Have you ever seen or heard anything strange there?" I asked of m
y host.
He shook his head. "Nothing," he answered curtly, and lit his cigar.
"I presume you have not," I asked, half laughing, of Mrs. Oke, "since youdon't mind sitting in that room for hours alone? How do you explain thisuncanny reputation, since nothing ever happened there?"
"Perhaps something is destined to happen there in the future," sheanswered, in her absent voice. And then she suddenly added, "Suppose youpaint my portrait in that room?"
Mr. Oke suddenly turned round. He was very white, and looked as if he weregoing to say something, but desisted.
"Why do you worry Mr. Oke like that?" I asked, when he had gone into hissmoking-room with his usual bundle of papers. "It is very cruel of you,Mrs. Oke. You ought to have more consideration for people who believe insuch things, although you may not be able to put yourself in their frame ofmind."
"Who tells you that I don't believe in _such things_, as you call them?"she answered abruptly.
"Come," she said, after a minute, "I want to show you why I believe inChristopher Lovelock. Come with me into the yellow room."